Abstract

Walther Rathenau

This article presents information on the book "Walther Rathenau: Sein Leben und sein Werk," by Harry Graf Kessler. No greater loss has come to the German Republic during the first ten years of its existence than that inflicted upon the whole nation through the murder in 1922 of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Walther Rathenau. That this assassination of Germany's foremost statesman immediately after he had won, at Genoa and Rapallo, the first success for German after-war diplomacy should have been the result of an ultra-German Nationalist conspiracy, seems a fitting external symbol of the deep inner tragedy. His life, from beginning to end, was one long struggle to overcome the conflict of Jewish and German character, of intellect and soul, of democracy and absolutism, of socialism, and capitalism, of humanity and raced Count Harry Kessler, the well-known pacifist, has in a masterly fashion depicted this tragedy, making us realize that in the strivings, discords, failures, and achievements of this extraordinary man the deepest problems of our civilization are reflected.